


I Have Often Walked Down This Street Before

by nik_knows_nothing



Series: The Street Where You Live [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Meet-Cute, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 19:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17351315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nik_knows_nothing/pseuds/nik_knows_nothing
Summary: MJ meets Spider-Man about a month after the Accords.And then, of course, she meets him, and she realizes, no, she actually met him at the start of freshman year.Although, technically, she doesn’t think she’s ever even officially met him, but she’s, like, peripherally aware of him, and has been since the start of freshman year.So yeah, she thinks. Peter Parker is Spider-Man.





	I Have Often Walked Down This Street Before

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to HaleyGrace for reminding me--inspiration for this story comes from this super sweet fan comic:  
> https://m.imgur.com/gallery/b2jV1

MJ meets Spider-Man about a month after the Accords.

And then, of course, she meets him, and she realizes, no, she actually met him at the start of freshman year.

Although, technically, she doesn’t think she’s ever even officially met him, but she’s, like, peripherally aware of him, and has been since the start of freshman year.

So yeah, she thinks. Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

But the way it happens is this—MJ’s on her way home from school, and it’s honestly not that big of a deal.

She’s grown up in New York, she knows her way around, she’s pretty good at taking care of herself most of the time, and really, it probably would have worked out okay.

But it might not have, so she supposes she owes him one.

She’s walking home from school, and academic decathlon practice has dragged on a little longer than it should have, seeing as how their first meet isn’t for another month or so.

Liz says it’s never too early to be prepared for the AcaDec finals.

Liz calls it _AcaDec._

MJ has decided to find this charming instead of weird.

But practice ran a little late, and then she had to go back to the Chem lab to grab a book she left behind, and then she missed the train she usually catches and had to wait a little bit longer—

One thing leads to another, and the sky is just starting to grow darker, and MJ’s still not too concerned about it.

But then she has to take a detour on her way home from the station, because part of the sidewalk is being torn out for renovations, and the end result is that she has the brilliant idea of taking a shortcut through an area she’s only been maybe three times before.

This, she thinks as she walks, was probably not a good idea.

She keeps her headphones in her ears but turns off her music, so that she can listen to everything around her, hugs her books a little tighter, and walks a little bit faster.

At first, she thinks she’s just being paranoid.

The footsteps following her—someone’s just heading in the same direction, if she just walks a little bit faster— MJ speeds up, and so do the footsteps.

MJ’s stomach does a kind of barrel roll.

_Okay_ , she tells herself. _Okay, so think._

She’s always been pretty good at that.

As she walks, she pulls her backpack around to her side, pulls out the pepper spray her dad got her for her thirteenth birthday—because nothing says _coming-of-age_ like personal defense tools—and holds it loose and ready in one hand.

The footsteps are still coming.

MJ walks faster, and so does the person behind her.

As she turns a corner, she glances back over her shoulder, and her heart sinks somewhere down to the sidewalk, because there are three guys, stupid-looking white guys with scraggly beards and clothes that are too expensive to really look as tough as they clearly think they do.

Not actual Brooklyn kids, then.

Just a bunch of preppy rich kids playing at being bad.

It’s—not reassuring.

And MJ’s not an idiot, she knows that there’s a pretty good chance that they’re just following her because they think it’s funny to watch her freaking out, for the same reason assholes will honk car horns from half a foot away, because it’s funny to watch some girl—any girl—jump out of her skin.

But that doesn’t mean—

MJ tightens her grip on her backpack and debates the merits of running.

There’s another corner up ahead, and MJ eyes it, doubtful.

If she rounds the corner and sprints, she can maybe make it to the next intersection before the idiots notice she’s running.

She just needs to get back to a busier street, and fast.

The corner’s coming up quick now, and MJ wishes she’d left some of her books in her locker, wishes she had any faith in her own ability to actually sprint for sustained amounts of time.

_Okay_ , she tells herself again. _Okay, here we go._

She takes one last deep breath, clasps her books with a death grip, turns the corner—

And freezes.

She doesn’t actually freeze, because again, she’s not an idiot, but she definitely misses a step or two, regains her footing a second later, and tries to keep herself from laughing out loud in relief.

Because Spider-Man is sitting cross-legged on the streetlamp right across the street, the glow from his phone lighting up his face.

He’s frowning—whatever he’s reading, it can’t be good news—but it’s the real Spider-Man, and it’s about the closest thing to a lifeline MJ’s seen in all her days.

Then she hears the footsteps behind her once more, and she swears under her breath and dashes across the street.

“Spider-Man!” she calls, and he nearly falls off the streetlamp.

So, yeah, that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

But he catches himself with one hand, hangs for a second before dropping to land in a crouch without the slightest hint of effort, and she can work with that.

When he straightens up, MJ realizes she’s taller than him.

“Um, hey,” he says, in a voice that’s way too young, and then shakes his head, like he’s clearing his mind. “I mean—hello, miss, how can I help you?”

His voice is a lot lower this time.

It’s not very subtle.

MJ can’t bring herself to care.

“Hey,” she says. “You busy right now?”

“Not at all,” he says immediately. “Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine,” MJ says, a knee-jerk reflex.

But then she glances over her shoulder, gets another brief glimpse of the group of guys now milling around uncertainly at the corner, and when she looks back, she realizes that Spider-Man’s followed her gaze.

“Miss,” he says, in what she thinks might be actually be his real voice. “Are you okay?”

MJ can’t help it.

She doesn’t glance over her shoulder again, but her gaze drifts just a little to the side before she can stop herself, and it seems to be enough.

“Do you want me to talk to them?” he asks, and he seems just a little bit larger than he did a second before, but MJ frowns.

“What good would that do?” she asks.

She doesn’t need someone to go beating up every person on the streets of New York, and she’s not about to ask someone to do that, anyways.

She just wants to know that someone’s watching her back.

Spider-Man starts to say, “I—”

“I’m fine,” MJ interjects, before he can talk himself into aggravated assault. “But—if you’re not busy—you think you could maybe walk a little ways with me?”

As soon as she asks, she feels silly, like a little kid that’s too small and too scared to walk down the street by themselves.

But he’d said he wasn’t busy.

He’d asked how he could help.

Whether he thinks she sounds like a little kid or not, Spider-Man relaxes easily, so that he’s not staring over her shoulder anymore.

“Sure,” he says. “Yeah, sure, of course.”

“Cool,” MJ says, and then feels awkward, so she forces the emotion down and nods briskly. “Cool, thanks.”

She sets off down the street again, and after a few seconds, Spider-Man falls into step beside her, and then she’s just walking down some mostly-empty street with an honest-to-goodness superhero next to her, like it’s no big deal.

After a few moments longer, she figures, if the guy’s taking the time out of whatever he was doing before to walk her home, she might as well do her part and carry on a conversation, so she shifts her books in her arms, and says, “I’m Michelle.”

“Nice to meet you, Michelle,” Spider-Man says, as though this is a perfectly normal conversation to be having. “I’m Spider-Man.”

Like she doesn’t know.

“So I’ve heard,” she says, because saying _literally everyone knows who you are_ would probably not be very cool. “Is that one word or with a hyphen?”

Spider-Man shrugs. “How should I know?”

MJ raises an eyebrow. “I assume you’ve got some control over your branding.”

“None at all.”

“Not even a social media?”

“Absolutely not,” he says, and laughs at the look on her face. “Have you _seen_ the tweets Daredevil gets? It’s like a web of bad decisions.”

MJ’s seen the tweets.

She even knows some of the people who sent them.

Betty Brant has sworn her to secrecy.

Then the exact wording of what he’s just said sinks in, and she rolls her eyes. “Ouch.”

“Get it?” Spider-Man asks, sounding way too pleased with himself. “Web?”

“I got it,” she reassures him. “Hence the _ouch_.”

Spider-Man gasps in mock outrage. “Ouch.”

MJ’s not sure, but she thinks he might be trying to mimic her voice.

She slants a look over at him, but he just stares innocently back at her, and it’s not like she can get much of a read on his face with that mask, anyways.

So she looks ahead again, juggles her books again, and wishes, again, that she’d thought to leave a few of them in her locker.

“Need help with those?”

The question startles her out of her mental should-have-done routine, and when she looks over, Spider-Man makes a kind of awkward wave at her armful of books.

MJ tries out a gasp of her own and slips into her best Southern Belle accent. “Spider-Man is going to carry my books for me? I’m blushing.”

He scoffs and holds his hands up in surrender, but she thinks he might be laughing, just a little.

“Jeez,” he says, and she can almost hear the grin in his voice. “Just thought I’d ask.”

“Well, in that case,” MJ says, and lets him scoop the books out of her hands.

He staggers dramatically at the weight, as though she hasn’t seen him stop a car with his bare—or gloved—hands, stumbles a few steps like he’s going to tip over, and she rolls her eyes and tells herself very sternly not to laugh.

“Where are we going?” he asks, once he’s fallen back into step with her once more, and when she tells him, he pretends to stumble all over again.

“You got somewhere else to be?” MJ asks, and then immediately regrets it, because, again, he’s an actual, literal superhero, he’s probably got about a billion things he needs to be doing—

“Nowhere that I can think of,” he says, easy as you please. “But, you know, if you wanted to get there quicker—”

He hefts the books easily in one hand and makes a weird shooting gesture with the other.

MJ blinks over at him for a few seconds before she understands.

For a second, she thinks about taking him up on it.

Everyone’s seen the footage, and she’d be lying if she said she’s never thought about what it must feel like, flying between the buildings, quick as thought.

But then she tries to think about the logistics of how, exactly that would work, where arms and legs and backpacks and books would need to be, and something in the back of her mind sort of balks at the idea.

“Ah,” she says out loud. “I’m not too good with heights.”

“Really?” He sounds mildly surprised, as though he’s never even considered the idea of people not wanting to go zipping around the city.

Again, MJ considers taking him up on the offer, and she really, really doesn’t blame him.

“Not all of us have superpowers,” she says instead. “Some of us are actually scared of falls from very great heights.”

Spider-Man shrugs. “Are those two mutually exclusive?”

And, okay, he wins points for that response, because the easy response would be _that never happens!_ But instead, people are afraid, and he doesn’t try to argue with that.

“Have you ever fallen?” MJ asks, and he actually laughs out loud.

“I’m sorry,” he says, all false consideration and wry humor. “Have you not seen the fail compilations on YouTube?”

“No,” MJ lies immediately.

Spider-Man tips his head to one side, and she caves.

“Okay, yeah,” she admits, because of course she has. “But it seemed rude to bring it up.”

“Appreciate it,” he says, and then shrugs again, dismissing the issue. “Oh, well. Next time.”

And that’s pretty cute, too.

Because, realistically, Spider-Man probably sees a couple million faces every day, it’s not like she’s gonna stand out all that much.

But it’s very sweet of him to pretend.

“Thanks,” she says, after a few more moments, and realizes that she’d never said thank you earlier, and so hopes that he understands she’s not just talking about the web-slinging.

“You’re fine,” Spider-Man says, light and dismissive.

“Of course I am,” MJ says, another knee-jerk response, but then forces herself to sound a little bit more serious. “But still. Thanks.”

This time, there’s no question what she’s referring to, and Spider-Man nods, sobering up a little bit himself.

“No problem,” he says, and they walk on in silence.

In retrospect, the shortcut turns out to be not that much of a shortcut, because there’s another construction zone, and Spider-Man looks like he’s going to offer to web them around again, but then he glances up at the buildings around them, and apparently decides it’s too high, and holds his tongue.

Instead, they both skirt around the orange cones and concrete pylons, and MJ picks her way over a pile of rubble and ignores the way Spider-Man looks like he’s about to offer her a hand.

He doesn’t, and she appreciates that, too.

Once safely back on the sidewalk, Spider-Man hums a little under his breath, and they walk a little bit further.

“So, the weather—” he begins at last, just as MJ says, “Okay, so what’s your stance on the Sokovia Accords?”

Spider-Man actually does trip at that, which MJ’s going to go ahead and count as a victory.

“What?” he asks, just as MJ demands, “Were you seriously about to talk about the weather?”

“I don’t like awkward silences!” he protests.

“God, who does?” she muses. “Did you even read the full draft?”

He winces, exaggerated enough that she can see the cringe in the weird, oversized eyes on his mask. “I think I’d prefer the awkward silence.”

“Works for me,” MJ says, because she’s just remembered that he _is_ doing her a favor, after all, and she probably shouldn’t go trying to poke holes in his worldview.

Again, the silence stretches for a few moments longer, and then Spider-Man sighs and scrubs a hand across his face, pushing back at the mask in a way that she thinks might be a tell for when he’s out of costume, like he wants to scrub his hand through his hair and has forgotten that it’s not really an option.

“I hadn’t read it before I went to Germany,” he admits, voice all quiet and serious. “I read the full thing on the plane. On the way back.”

He pauses then, like he’s trying to pick out what to say next.

“Yeah?” MJ prompts, a beat too late.

“Mr. Stark—” Spider-Man starts, and then breaks off again and says simply, “I owe him a lot.”

She figures that’s true enough.

“Sure,” she says. “A new suit, at least.”

“Yeah?” Spider-Man looks down at his suit, and if she didn’t know better, she’d say he sounded pretty proud of himself. “I wasn’t sure people had noticed.”

MJ grins, an expression she has been told is mildly unsettling. “Oh, people noticed, alright.”

“Really?” He sounds downright delighted, and MJ rolls her eyes for the fifteenth time, but she still can’t help smiling.

“Don’t fish for compliments,” she says, prim as possible, and Spider-Man laughs, but then he sobers up pretty quickly.

“Mr. Stark is a friend,” he says again, and then makes another exaggerated face. “I think, anyhow. And I owe him so much. But—I don’t think the legislators—I mean, I think there was a…disconnect between the decision making process and the reality of the situation.”

MJ thinks about that.

It’s a very good non-answer.

She’s reluctantly impressed.

“Wow,” she says. “Is your alter ego a politician?”

Spider-Man laughs again. “Yeah, that’s a no.”

“Political Science major?”

“Yeah, that’s a hard no.”

MJ frowns at him, suspicious. “You got something against Political Science?”

“Sure. I don’t understand it at all.”

She laughs, and he looks just as surprised as she feels to hear it. “Fair enough.”

“I’d still help Mr. Stark again,” Spider-Man says, once they’ve gone a few more paces. “If he asked me.”

MJ opens her mouth to argue, and he holds up a hand, so that she’s not sure whether he’s surrendering or just trying to buy some time.

“ _But_ ,” he says. “I don’t think it was a bad thing, necessarily. That Captain America got away. And his friend—”

He breaks off mid-sentence, and MJ pounces immediately.

“His friend?” she echoes. “You mean the Winter Soldier?”

She has no idea what he looks like under the mask, but from the way he tightens his grip on the books, she imagines he’s probably gone a little pale.

“I, uh—”

“I found some incident reports,” MJ says, just to put him out of his misery.

“You found some incident reports,” he echoes. “In German?”

“Google Translate exists for a reason, Bug Boy.”

“It’s Spider-Man,” he says, so quickly that she thinks this is probably his version of a knee-jerk response.

“I’m aware.”

“ _Anyways_ ,” Spider-Man says. “Cap was—you know, I’m sure you’ve seen the newsreels.”

“I have, yeah.”

That was one of the biggest arguments that most of the news reports had tried to spin.

Of course Cap was a criminal—look at how desperately his whole group fought, if they had truly been in the right, surely they would have just put down their weapons and been willing to talk?

MJ’s never put much stock in that argument.

“Of course you have,” Spider-Man mumbles, sounding amused in spite of himself. “But his friends—they weren’t trying to fight. The Winter Soldier—he was just trying to get away.”

She thinks about that for a few seconds.

“Everyone seems to have made a pretty big mess, for a bunch of people who weren’t trying to fight,” she says, just to play devil’s advocate.

“Sure,” he allows. “But it could have been a lot worse.”

It really could have been.

“Okay.”

“So I don’t know what I think about Team Cap,” Spider-Man says at last. “But—I don’t think Tony’s as thrilled about the Accords as he let on.”

MJ raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t ask about him.”

“Fine,” he says, all overdramatic again. “I know I’m not.”

That surprises her.

Not that he doesn’t like it—because he’s read the whole thing, and he seems reasonably intelligent, of course he doesn’t like it—but that he’s so open about it.

“The registry,” he says, and then breaks off, thinks for a second, and tries again. “I don’t like the idea of General Ross knowing—there was a lot in the Accords that I…I didn’t like.”

This is something else to consider, that Spider-Man has people counting on him without the mask. That he might not want them put on a list of people who can be detained for association.

“Huh,” she says, because she doesn’t know how to say that out loud. “But if Tony Stark called you to go hunt down Steve Rogers tomorrow, you’d do it?”

“He wouldn’t,” Spider-Man says instantly.

“He’s Tony Stark,” MJ says.

“So?”

“So no one knows what he’ll do.”

“Nah,” he says, thoughtful. “I figure Pepper knows.”

MJ stops dead on the street. “Have you met Pepper Potts? Is she amazing?”

“She’s pretty cool,” Spider-Man says, and then, in the general direction of his feet. “I don’t know if I can get you an autograph, though.”

MJ almost laughs out loud at that.

He just seems so disappointed by himself.

“I wasn’t asking for an autograph,” she assures him.

“Why not? I did, on the plane.”

“Did you really?”

“She’s pretty cool.”

“That she is.”

As they walk, Spider-Man leafs idly through a few pages of the book on top of the pile he’s carrying— _An Issue-Based Approach to Transnational Cooperation_ —which would normally be an absolute deal-breaker for MJ, but he is carrying her books, so she’ll let him live, this one time.

“A bit of light reading?” he asks, after skimming the pages too quickly to have really read them.

MJ squints at him. “Was that a Harry Potter reference?”

“Uh—” His eyes widen dramatically. “No?”

“Oh, God,” she says. “Spider-Man’s a nerd.”

“Says the nerd who caught the reference,” he says absently, and then he glances back up at her, apparently panicked. “Uh, I mean—”

“Pot, kettle,” MJ says, before he can spiral into total freakout mode. “I get it.”

“I prefer _nerds of a feather_.”

“Oh, _God_.”

“I think I’ve got that on a t-shirt somewhere,” he muses.

MJ tilts her head in exaggerated confusion. “You mean the onesie _isn’t_ a 24/7 deal?”

“Absolutely not,” he says, way too quickly. “Can you imagine the chafing?”

“I can now.”

“This is not a very breathable material.”

She wrinkles her nose. “ _Ew._ ”

“Baby powder is an important part of any superhero’s arsenal,” he says, defensive. “Even Iron Man’s. And Captain America’s, I guarantee it.”

“Wait until I drop that gem at school,” MJ says, as though she’s going to tell literally anybody about this conversation. “Do you even know how many fantasies I’ll be ruining?”

“Hey, if they’re fantasizing about wearing the suit, they deserve to know the particulars.”

“Yeah, because it’s definitely the suit they’re fantasizing about.”

The white eyes on his mask narrow a little in confusion. “What do you mean?”

MJ looks at him.

She genuinely can’t tell if he’s kidding or not.

“Dude,” she says. “Come on.”

She sees the exact moment he realizes what she’s talking about, because his eyes blow up to roughly the size of dinner plates, and he shakes his head.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he protests. “As far as I know, the only people who care about me are kindly little old ladies who are worried that I don’t eat enough.”

“How many calories _do_ you need?”

“So many. Little old ladies and angry talk radio people who think I’m ruining New York.”

“They’re giving you too much credit.”

“I know, right?” he shakes his head again, but it’s a little more rueful this time. “Greater men than me have tried and failed.”

MJ _hmm_ -s, thinking it over.

Then, keeping her voice carefully casual, she says, “So you _don’t_ want to know where you rank in a listing of the Avenger’s best butts?”

He does trip this time.

She’s gonna count that as a win, too.

“No,” he says, voice even higher than before. “No, I do not.”

“It’s pretty high.”

“Do you check the listing regularly?”

“I have to,” she says, and when his head whips around to stare at her, she shrugs. “Every time Black Panther drops in the ranking, it’s my moral obligation to vote it back up to first place again.”

His breath whooshes out in a laugh.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” he admits. “That’s fair.”

Something about the way he says is sticks in the back of her mind, and before she realizes what she’s doing, she reaches out and catches his arm, forcing him to stop.

“Spider-Man,” she says, very serious. “Have you met the Black Panther?”

He stares between her and her hand, and then says, “Only once.”

“And?” MJ demands.

“He’s probably the single most awesome person I’ve met in my entire life,” Spider-Man says, voice reverent. “And also I’m kind of terrified of him.”

She considers that.

“Yeah,” she concedes at last. “That seems about right.”

They start walking again, and after another block or so, Spider-Man huffs out a laugh and shakes his head when she looks over.

“You know,” he says. “ _Most_ people just ask if I can summon spiders.”

There’s a terrifying thought.

“Can you?”

“Do you think there would be literally any crime left anywhere if I could?”

“That’s not a _no_.”

“No,” he says, deliberate.

“Well, that’s a relief.”

They pass a stairway that seems familiar, and then MJ realizes, all of a sudden, that they’re literally just a few doors away from her family’s house.

Ten seconds later, and MJ stops, jerks a thumb over her shoulder towards the door.

“This is me,” she says, somewhat unnecessarily.

“Cool,” Spider-Man says, and lets her take the stack of books back out of his arms. “You got it?”

“I got it,” she lies without thinking, because she really had forgotten how heavy they were. “Sorry for—you know.”

Spider-Man does that thing where he tips his head to one side again, like he’s a puppy, trying to figure out exactly what she’s trying to say.

MJ waves her hand back in the direction they came from, and his eyes go wide again.

“Are you kidding?” he asks. “Do you know what my routine usually is? It’s nice to not have someone trying to kill me for five seconds.”

“You don’t know that. Contact poisons are a thing. You could be dying as we speak.”

“I think I’ll take my chances,” he says, and leans against the railing on the staircase, in what she thinks is supposed to be a cool, casual kind of motion.

Unfortunately, he misses the railing on his first try and flails for a second before catching himself and propping himself against the ironwork, crossing one ankle across the other.

MJ just looks at him.

He huffs out a laugh again, and relaxes a little from the wannabe-James-Dean pose.

“I mean it,” he says, as sincere as he’s been all night. “It’s a nice break.”

With a sudden jolt, MJ remembers that she’s probably carved a pretty good-sized chunk out of his patrol, and she can feel her face turning red, but ignores it resolutely.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, too quickly, and then Spider-Man’s looking at her just a little too closely, so that she can feel her face getting even redder. “I guess—I mean, you’ve got stuff to do.”

“Not really,” he says, just as quickly. “Um, that is—I might swing back over a few streets. Make sure our friends aren’t still hanging around.”

MJ looks back in the direction he’s indicating.

It’s funny, because it’s not like she’d exactly forgotten why she asked him to tag along, but it’s also not like she’s exactly been thinking about it for the past fifteen minutes or so.

“See,” she says out loud. “See, now, that I’m okay with.”

Because it would have been easy for Spider-Man to go all testosterone-poisoning and beat the tar out of those creeps, when she’d first come up to him.

But that wasn’t what she’d asked him to do, and so he’s walked all the way to her front door, done exactly what she’d needed, and now he’s going to go zipping back the way they came, just to make sure every other random high school kid is just as safe.

It’s—nice.

_Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man_ , she thinks, because that’s his tagline, isn’t it?

“Cool,” he says, and MJ nods, glances around.

“Thank you,” she says, after another couple seconds have passed. “Again. I’m really—I mean, I’m glad I ran into you.”

It sounds corny, and she winces a little, but Spider-Man just laughs a little, rocks back against the railing for half a second before bouncing a little on the balls of his feet.

“I think that’s supposed to be my line,” he says, and MJ arches an eyebrow.

“Yeah? Then what’s my line?”

“I don’t know,” he says, sounding thoughtful. “I think all the usual lines would just be sarcasm coming from you.”

So, of course, MJ knows exactly knows exactly what _lines_ he’s talking about, and she does her Southern Belle voice again, just for the heck of it.

“You saved my _life_ , Spider-Man,” she says, batting her eyes like there’s not a very good chance it’s the truth. “I’m just so very _grateful_ , if there’s _anything_ at _all_ that I can do—”

“Please stop,” Spider-Man says, but he sound like he might be trying not to laugh.

MJ laughs, too, just because she can, and because it was fun, getting to pretend she was friends with a real-life superhero.

“Seriously,” she says, once she figures it’s time to stop pretending and head on back to the real world. “Thank you. For carrying my books.”

“Well,” he says, and knocks lightly on the cover of her transnational cooperation text. “You needed your light reading.”

MJ rolls her eyes.

“Nerd,” she says, and he puts a hand to his heart, like she’s wounded him.

“Why do I even bother?” he asks, all affected outrage, and MJ grins again.

“Good question,” she admits, and he does laugh this time, bright and cheerful and sunny, even now that it’s grown fully dark out, and the only lights are spilling out from the building around them, or pooling in puddles from the streetlamps above.

He takes a step back, glances up and down the street, like he’s checking to make sure the coast is clear, and then turns back to her and gives this two-fingered salute, all flippant and casual.

“See you around, Miss Jones.”

It’s probably the coolest he’s been all night.

MJ chews on her lip, because she can feel her face turning a little red again, in spite of her best efforts, and she doesn’t want to make these even worse by smiling, too.

_See you around._

She highly doubts it.

“No,” she says, and does her level best not to make it sound too harsh. “You won’t.”

To his credit, he doesn’t argue.

Instead, he just shrugs one more time, and scrubs his hands down his sides in a motion that she recognizes at once as trying to push them into non-existent pockets.

“Well,” he says. “It sounds nice, anyways.”

“That it does,” MJ says, because she may as well give credit where it’s due.

And then her arms are aching with the weight of her books, and she takes a step back, towards the light from under the front door, to where her family’s waiting, and her little sister’s probably kneeling next to the living room table, working on her history homework.

“Goodnight,” she says, and Spider-Man nods, brisk and businesslike.

“Goodnight,” he says.

He takes a step back, too, and then another, and then there’s this odd _thwip_ noise, and he’s jerked into the air by the web he’s just fired, swinging away, just like second nature.

MJ watches him until he’s gone.

Then she turns, opens the door, and goes in to see her family.

She doesn’t tell them about what happened—her little sister’s going through a Spider-Man phase in a _big_ way, and while she doesn’t exactly blame her, she also doesn’t super want to encourage that—just that she had to go back for a book and missed her train, and they accept it easily enough.

At any rate, it’s not until much, much later, when she’s reviewing for AcaDec and thinking about their next meet on Friday when something in the back of her brain rattles to a halt.

For a second, she’s not sure what it was, so she backtracks a little and tries to retrace the mental path she’d been on.

AcaDec meet on Friday—Flash had better not try to steal one of her literature questions, or she will actually vivisect him—maybe if she’s lucky, he’ll just be on alternate— Well, he’ll only be on alternate if Parker manages to show up—

And that something in the back of her mind just kind of goes—

_Click._

There are a thousand reasons that what she’s thinking probably isn’t true—for all her suspicions, Spider-Man wears a mask for a reason, and he could be just about anyone—

But there were those lame puns, and the way he wanted to push his hands in his pockets, and the stupid t-shirt reference, and his voice, and the way he’d jumped at the sight of her—

And MJ’s not an idiot, she knows it’s hardly conclusive.

_See you around, Miss Jones._

_Nice to meet you, Michelle._

She’d never told him her last name.

“Oh,” she says, out loud in her room, voice barely above a whisper and sitting cross-legged on her banned-books bedspread. “Oh, _shit._ ”


End file.
